Traditionally, a portable circular saw has a housing, a motor in the housing, a handle mounted on the housing, a rotatable circular saw blade connected with the motor, a fixed blade guard mounted on the housing and covering the upper part of the blade, a base plate for supporting the housing, a movable blade guard pivotally mounted to the housing and covering the lower part of the blade which extends out of the base plate, and a battery assembly connected to the housing for supplying power to the motor.
In the prior art, the motor and the handle are typically arranged on one side of a plane formed by the circular saw blade. Therefore, when a user holds the handle of the circular saw, the force applied to the handle by the user is not in the same plane as the circular saw blade and can cause a torque relative to the circular saw blade. As a result, during a cutting operation, the torque urges the circular saw blade to stray off line in the direction of the torque. This can cause the cutting line of the circular saw blade to deviate from the initial plane of the circular saw blade. To accommodate for the torque, the user must continually adjust the direction of the force applied to the handle to offset the torque and to ensure the cutting accuracy of the saw blade. This additional effort by the user increases the effort required and the overall difficulty of the cutting operation. In sum, when the motor of a circular saw is arranged on one side of the saw blade and is in a different plane than the saw blade, the effort required by the user and the difficulty of operation is unnecessarily increased because of the design and balance of the circular saw assembly.